


i've seen the future (so i already know)

by epilogues



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, Land of Tombs and Krypton, M/M, a little bit of both!, they explore a tomb and don't talk about their feelings!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-29 21:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20443151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epilogues/pseuds/epilogues
Summary: They both know this isn't going to last much longer, but that doesn't mean Dirk isn't going to try.





	i've seen the future (so i already know)

**Author's Note:**

> my second homestuck fic and it's already angst! can i get a wahoo!
> 
> so, this is set like. shortly before page 5515/everything that happens around then! sorry if there are any small timeline discrepancies, it's like two am and sleep is more important than checking those right now!
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> [title from keep it simple by cobra starship]

\-- timaeusTestified [TT]  began pestering  golgothasTerror [GT]  \--

TT: Hey, Jake!  
TT: I know we just hung out two days ago, but I just found this dope new tomb while I was on a walk today.  
TT: So if you want, we can go exploring.   
TT: Keep getting that grist and shit.   
TT: It’s something to do other than just sit around, at least.   
TT: Anyway, let me know if you want to go exploring!   
TT: Love you.   


\-- timaeusTestified [TT]  ceased pestering  golgothasTerror [GT]  \--

Dirk shuts his phone off with a sigh and drops it back into his pocket. He’s well-aware that he’s probably being clingy, that he needs to just back off and stop trying to get Jake to go exploring in every random tomb and cave he finds, but… he just can’t seem to help himself. And besides, they’re _boyfriends_. That means Dirk’s allowed to be clingy, right?

Dirk pushes his shades back up the bridge of his nose. They slip back down to the very edge of his nose almost immediately, thanks to the inexplicable film of sweat on his face. Goddamnit, is he nervous about texting Jake now? Jesus Christ, he needs to get a grip.

Of course, Dirk being Dirk, he decides to do the thing that will only help him get further and further from said grip, and check his phone once more. 

There’s one Pesterchum notification, but it’s not from Jake.

\-- timeausTestified [TT] began pestering  timaeusTestified [TT]  \--

TT: You are being clingy, you know.   
TT: According to my calculations, you send Jake roughly 70% more texts than he sends you, with the exception of when you talk about movies.   
TT: Then it’s only 40% more.   
TT: Can you fuck off?   
TT: And stop reading my chat logs.   


\-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering  timaeusTestified [TT]  \--

Seventy percent more texts. That’s clearly a sign that something is going wrong, there’s no way that it’s not. But no, no, it can’t be. This has to be the one thing in this game that goes _right._

Dirk swings his legs idly and stares up at the swirling green sky above. The color, of course, only makes him think of Jake more - Jake’s eyes, and the way they’d looked in the eerie light of the tomb they’d explored last week, Jake’s messages, and the way they’ve started to dwindle in amount and length as weeks and weeks in the game slip by, and - 

His phone buzzes.

\-- golgothasTerror [GT]  began pestering  timaeusTestified [TT]  \--

GT: Oh hi dirk!   
GT: Boy howdy do i feel awful i missed you earlier but i can hang out if youd still like to.  
TT: Yes, of course I’d still like to.   
TT: I know time’s kind of weird, but do you want to meet around 1 today?  
GT: 1? Golly dirk you have to leave a man some time to get ready for such capital adventures!   
GT: I think if i shake several legs i can be there at 2.  
GT: Does that work for you?  
TT: Yeah, sure!   
GT: Thats the ticket! See you at 2 then!  
TT: Yeah, see you then.   


\-- golgothasTerror [GT]  ceased pestering  timaeusTestified [TT]  \--

Okay. Two o’clock. _Just because Jake needs time to get ready, obviously, not because he wants to spend less time with you,_ Dirk attempts to remind himself.

With a sigh, Dirk stands up. The thin air at the top of the roof has his vision graying out at the edges for just a moment, but between living on a planet full of krypton gas and getting to see Jake English on a fairly-regular basis, he’s pretty used to being dizzy and short of breath. 

Dirk checks the time - 11:58am - on his phone before dropping it back into his pocket and heading back inside to get ready.

He’s sitting on the couch, dressed, hair properly gelled, mask in hand and shades in pocket, and phone sitting face-up in anticipation of any messages at exactly 12:10pm.

“Well, shit,” Dirk mutters. He drops his head onto the back of the couch and groans. What the fuck is he supposed to do for the next two hours?

\-- timaeusTestified [TT]  began pestering  timaeusTestified [TT]  \--

TT: Got ready way too fast again, huh?   
TT: Shut up.   
TT: Hey, I’m just saying that two hours of intellectual conversation might be better than two hours of sitting around and wondering if you’re being too clingy.   
TT: You’re stuck with yourself either way.   
TT: Talking to me just makes it seem a little less like you are.  
TT: I guess you’re right.   
TT: Do you think Jake actually needed two hours to get ready or is he avoiding me?  
TT: Hm. Hard to say.  
TT: If you would stop locking your old chat logs I could do more research and give you a better answer.  
TT: Yeah, no, that’s not happening, dude.   
TT: Besides, I’m tired of talking about this.  
TT: I don’t think I need to remind you that you brought this up, like 90% of the time, but. Well. You brought this up.  
TT: Well, now I’m bringing it down. So there.  
TT: Let’s just talk about… I don’t know.  
TT: How about we talk about that empty kernelsprite you have?  


\-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering  timaeusTestified [TT]  \--

Dirk’s phone reads 12:17pm. _Goddamnit._

He spends the next two hours wandering aimlessly around his house and feeling a little too much like he’s back in the pre-game world. It takes a monumental amount of self control to not just start pestering Jake, but Dirk firmly reminds himself that he’s about to see Jake in person, and that they don’t need to talk every minute of every day. Hal’s words are still stuck in Dirk’s head anyway, like a shitty mix - _you send Jake roughly 70% more texts than he sends you._

So Dirk keeps his Pesterchum status as “offline” as the clock finally slides to 2:00pm. And as the clock slides to 2:10pm. And then to 2:20pm, and then to 2:45pm, and then it’s 3:00pm and Jesus, where the hell is Jake? 

The path Dirk’s been carving around the perimeter of the living room for the past hour takes on a new, wobbly quality as he starts to sweat once more. Is he being stood up? He thought he was being a good boyfriend by waiting a few days in between inviting Jake to hang out, and by letting Jake pick the time, but - _fuck_. God, he _is_ too clingy. Or maybe, somehow, he’s not being clingy enough? Maybe if he holds onto Jake just a little tighter, there won’t be any chance of him leaving. This shit is too complicated.

He opens Pesterchum and is halfway through typing in Roxy’s handle when he thinks better of telling her about this. He bugs her with his Jake drama enough as it is, and besides, the last time they talked, she said something about already being busy with preparations for Jane’s upcoming birthday party. 

So Dirk drops back onto the couch, closes his eyes, and is almost a little more surprised than relieved when there’s a knock on his door just two minutes later.

Dirk would never admit it later, but he literally springs to his feet as he rushes to open the door, sliding his shades onto his face while he turns the knob with the other.

“Hey!” he says, hoping his face conveys a cool mix of “happy to see you” and “totally nonchalant about the fact that you’re an hour late and I’ve been flipping my shit all day because of it.”

Jake steps into the house with a smile and a one-armed hug that makes Dirk’s heart twist in what he thinks is a happy way. “Sorry I’m so late, you know how time gets out here!” Jake says cheerfully, like it’s never crossed his mind to maybe text Dirk and let him know that he would be coming out. “Especially when you’re talking to Erisolsprite, golly, that guy is just the best of company. But, uh, anyway, are you still up for a little spelunking?”

“Oh, uh, yeah!” Dirk says. He grabs his mask from where it’s still lying on the couch and tucks it under his arm. “The tomb is only about a fifteen minute walk from here, so we should be able to get there, check it out, and be back before it gets too dark. Do you have your mask?”

Jake retrieves it from his sylladex and holds it up. “Right here!”

Dirk nods and gives him an extremely cool thumbs-up. “Alright, hell yeah, let’s go.”

They set off and reach the tomb’s entrance in no time. Dirk’s still kind of surprised that he spotted it - its yawning mouth is almost entirely hidden behind a tall column of sickly green stone, and there’s only a small aura of weird tomb-light radiating out of it. It seems sketchy and likely-to-get-them-killed as hell, so it’s basically the perfect place for a date.

Dirk and Jake put their masks on without a word, Dirk turning away slightly while he switches between shades and mask, and then they enter. 

“Gadzooks, it’s cold in here!” Jake exclaims. He shivers overdramatically, running his hands up and down his arms. 

Dirk snorts softly. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Do you, uh, want to borrow my hoodie? I have one captchalogued.”

Jake’s hands slow in their path. “Won’t you be cold in just your tank top?”

“Nah,” Dirk says easily. _Yes, obviously, but you know I’d freeze to death for you._ He retrieves the loose black hoodie and hands it to Jake, who puts it on immediately. “It looks good on you.”

Jake tilts his head down to look at the way the hoodie’s sleeves completely envelop his hands and laughs a little. “Thanks, Dirk.”

There’s a silence, like neither of them really know what to say next, until the faint sound of wind whistling through the tomb reminds them what they’re doing. “Ready to actually head on in?” Dirk asks. “I think there are some stairs over in that corner there, let’s go.”

“Alright!” Jake says.

He follows Dirk over to the steep stone stairs, and as they descend, Dirk can feel Jake’s breath on his neck. The sound of wind seems to get quieter and quieter the deeper they get, and soon the only light is the hazy green glow that the air and rocks themselves seem to emanate. The stairs keep going down, down, down, lower than most of the tombs they’ve found so far. No one speaks. Dirk wants to, he has a million and one words rushing around in his head and trying to form at least one coherent sentence, but nothing he can think of seems like it will fit into the dark, echo-prone space.

He doesn’t want to ask Jake about why he was late, he doesn’t want to tell Jake that he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Jake leaves him, he doesn’t want to talk about the way he’s starting to feel like their relationship is running on life support. He wants to tell Jake he loves him, but somehow, the words won’t get any further than his throat.

Finally, Jake clears his throat. “Did I tell you about the hilarious thing Erisolsprite did today? Boy howdy is that guy funny!”

Dirk can’t help but smile under his mask - something about Jake’s speech is so much more endearing in person. “What did he do?”

“Well,” Jake begins, “it started when I asked him about what being a sprite is like.”

Jake then launches into a long, winding road of a story that would be completely confusing if Dirk wasn’t hanging onto his every word. Dirk asks questions and exclaims at all the right moments, and when Jake finally gets to the, admittedly, pretty funny ending - Erisolsprite getting into a huge fight with himself over the pros and cons of wizard bees - they both end up laughing together for a solid five minutes.

It feels good in a way that Dirk hasn’t felt in their interactions in a while, and it makes not only his heart, but pretty much every organ and nerve ending and cell he has light up. His hand brushes Jake’s, and Jake grabs on seemingly without a second thought. Dirk is thankful for the darkness of the tomb disguising his giddy grin. 

They fall into a now-comfortable silence as the tomb gets quieter, darker, deeper, until suddenly, the stairs come to an abrupt end in front of a tall stone slab. There’s a bright light seeping out from the tiny gaps between the slab and the rest of the stone of the tomb. “Huh,” Dirk says. He hates the way his voice immediately echoes all around him. Huh, huh, huh, huh. “Think we can move this?”

Jake steps over to it and runs a hand over the stone. “Maybe? If we form a sort of battering ram that might work.”

Dirk forces himself to stop just staring at Jake in the soft green light and _think._ “Okay, yeah, let’s give it a shot. We’ll just stand next to each other and - “ He bumps his shoulder against the stone in demonstration.

“Alrighty!” Jake says. He lines his shoulder up against the wall so that he’s facing Dirk and says. “On three?”

“On three,” Dirk agrees. He squares his shoulders and prepares himself to be extremely sore tomorrow.

Together, Dirk and Jake count to three, and they both throw their weight against the stone with nearly-identical grunts.  
The good news is that the slab gives way and swings inward, almost like it’s on some sort of hinge. The bad news is that Dirk, who was not expecting the stone to give in so easily, loses his balance and falls through the doorway. The other bad news is that Jake is in the exact same boat.

Of course, coming full circle, though, Dirk considers it to be pretty damn good news that he lands directly on top of Jake, pressed chest to chest and legs to legs. Dirk and Jake take one look at each other and burst into laughter.

Once they’ve stopped finding their own idiocy hilarious, Dirk sits up and helps pull Jake semi-upright. He doesn’t let go of Jake’s hand once Jake is sitting all the way up, and Jake doesn’t let go of his. 

“What in the dickens is this place?” Jake asks, looking around.

The room they’ve stumbled into is weirdly bright, considering how far underground they must be by now. The stone door has swung shut behind them - but thankfully, there’s a crude handle carved on this side. Something about the air feels _different,_ for lack of a better word, and when Dirk checks the monitor he installed on his mask, he realizes that there’s simply not a lot of krypton in the room.

“Hey, I think we can take our masks in here, just for a little bit,” Dirk says. “I think it must be some sort of stopping point, kind of like a save point.”

“Huh,” Jake says, still looking around as he uses his free hand to reach up and unlatch his mask. 

Dirk unlatches his as well and quickly captchalogues it, and he’s hastily pulling his shades out of his pocket when Jake’s hand lands on his arm. 

“You don’t have to wear those right now,” Jake murmurs. His tone is so uncharacteristically… _soft_, Dirk supposes the word would be, that he finds himself actually listening. He lets go of the shades and looks up to meet Jake’s eyes directly with his own. 

“Uh, hey,” Dirk says, suddenly awkward. 

“Hey,” Jake replies. He moves his hand from Dirk’s arm to his shoulder, resting with just enough pressure to make Dirk hyper-aware of the contact. “I’m sorry again for being late earlier. This has been a mighty good time, Dirk.”

“It’s all good,” Dirk assures him, and for a moment, he feels like he means it. “And you’re right, this has been fun.”

Dirk’s not sure who leans in first, but he is sure that he and Jake are kissing a moment later, soft and slow and everything they haven’t gotten to do in quite a while. 

“I can’t believe we fell on our asses instead of just trying to open the door like normal people,” Dirk murmur-laughs once they finally break apart to breathe. 

Jake laughs, and his is much less of a murmur and more of a wholehearted chuckle directly into Dirk’s face. “We’re definitely sporting candidates to save the world, aren’t we?”

Dirk actually laughs at that, leaning forward and pressing his head against Jake’s shoulder. Right here, right now, all of today’s earlier worries feel miles upon miles away. He feels like he could stay down here with Jake forever, just laughing and kissing and too far underground for a Pesterchum signal to load. 

“Oh, definitely,” he says. “And you know we’re going to do a gret fuckin’ job of making a world ourselves.”

“It’ll be an awesome world,” Jake says. “We can give Erisolsprite real wizard bees to debate about.”

Dirk lifts his head from Jake’s now shaking shoulder with a soft snort and presses a kiss to his boyfriend’s jaw. “We’ll be able to spend all day watching your shitty movies.”

“We’ll be able to go adventuring all the time!”

“I’ll find a way to make mazes just for us to go explore.”

Jake leans back a little at that, brows furrowed. “But won’t you know everything about them if you make them?”

Too full of the adrenaline Jake’s presence brings him to be deterred, Dirk says, “I’ll just close my eyes when I make them.”

Jake laughs, once, a sound that Roxy once called donkey-esque but that Dirk will always call perfect, and then it’s his turn to drop a kiss on the side of Dirk’s head, right where his shades usually rest. “You can fill them with robots for me to strife with.”

“Oh, hell yeah, dude! There’s gonna be so many fuckin’ robots in our world.” Dirk slides his free hand up to cup the back of Jake’s head and pull him in for a kiss. “Robots to strife with, robots to mix with, robots that cook for you…”

“Robots that plan out mazes for us so you don’t have to do all of that closing your eyes tomfoolery,” Jake continues. His breath dances across Dirk’s face when he speaks, and Dirk closes his eyes.

“Robots that plan everything, how about, like, robots that plan out the best way to spend your day when you’re a god, robots that plan all of your food for you, robots that plan parties so you don’t have to stress about them for weeks.”

Jake moves his hand from Dirk’s shoulder to slide into Dirk’s hair. “Robots that style your hair without using an entire dag nab bottle of gel every morning.”

“Robots that teach you how to speak like a normal human.”

“Okay, shush, hang on, I’m going back to the planning robots. Robots that plan your Christmas list.”

Dirk hums in agreement and kisses Jake again. “Robots that plan ecto-family reunions.”

“Robots that plan weddings.”

And here’s the point where, if Dirk Strider has any sense of self-control, he’ll say something smart like, “Robots that plan dates.” However, Dirk Strider doesn’t really have any sense of self-control. At the very most, he just has a tiny bit that’s somehow deathly allergic to the presence of Jake English. So, Dirk says, “Robots that plan _our_ wedding.”

Jake instantly stiffens. Dirk can feel it happen all at once, the minute that one deadly little syllable slips from his mouth, how all of the places where they’re connected suddenly tense and shift away. Jake’s hand falls from his hair. “Uh-” Jake starts, clearing his throat and probably preparing to call Dirk “bud” or “sport” even though they’re fucking _dating_. (Supposedly.)

“Shit, sorry, that was weird, just pretend I didn’t say that,” Dirk says quickly. He pulls his hands back to his sides and fumbles for his shades.

“Dirk, I just - shucks buster, I just want you to - “ Jake huffs, seemingly unable to find out which words he wants to use to break Dirk’s heart.

“Just drop it,” Dirk insists. He shoves his shades onto his face before he can look Jake in the eyes, and then there will be no need to say what they’re both thinking. _We’re never going to have a wedding because Jake is going to leave, he’s going to leave and I bet he already knows how he’s going to do it._ “It’s not important.”

_”Dirk-”_

Dirk stands up, brushes his pants off even though there’s nothing on them. “We should probably get out of here soon, it’s going to be dark in an hour or so, and we have a lot of stairs to climb.”

Jake stares up at him for a long moment, face oddly unreadable, before he gets to his feet as well. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go.”

He plops his mask back down onto his head and walks over to the door, pulling it open without another word. Dirk watches him disappear through the doorway before swapping his shades for his mask and following Jake out of the bright space and back into the dark tomb.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed! :D feedback is always super duper appreciated!


End file.
